


The Lie Is the Game

by DreamsAtDusk



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:53:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28780806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsAtDusk/pseuds/DreamsAtDusk
Summary: In the wake of a shocking betrayal that rocked the heptarchate and high calendar alike, Shuos Jedao confronts a long-awaited reunion and the weight of necessary lies.
Relationships: Garach Jedao Shkan/Lirov Yeren/Vestenya Ruo
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7
Collections: MachinExchange 2021





	The Lie Is the Game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redsixwing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsixwing/gifts).



The hiss of the door closing was followed by a silence so abrupt, so profound, that General Shuos Jedao shifted his jaw and felt his ears pop. It was a physical release and tiny, insufficient to the emotional transition of what lay behind him: moths full of Kel and smatterings of other factions’ members, shocked to their cores and questioning what they had done. People bound tenuously to a concept they had yet to truly process and represented by the figure of their general.

Heresy, the heptarchate had already dubbed it. Heresy and betrayal and desertion and a cascade of other invocations to make a Kel’s heart quail to hear them. They had only the shield of believing what they had been convinced of by the rebellion.

By him.

Jedao himself felt the pressure like the weight of all a planet’s oceans, but could not show it to them. If he fractured, they all would. And so he had played the role he had for so long, deployed in a new trajectory. Displayed the right parts understanding and confidence. Stabilized what he could, mitigated what he could not.

But now, there was something else he very much needed to do for himself.

The soft _swish_ of fabric interrupted the silence before he could make his way out of the station’s small auxiliary reception hall. A woman stepped away from a viewport showing a distant milieu of spiraling stars and made her way to him. Clothing and carriage together, she was that sort of Liozh aide that struck as more than half Andan in looks. 

“General Jedao. I am Liozh Merel. Welcome and…and, thank you.” Far from so Andan there, with that uncertain and exhilarated look in her eyes. It made him like her the better for it.

“I’m sure the heptarch--“ The faintest of hesitation as she said the word, twinned by the moment she had said ‘Liozh’. They were really going to need to come up with some terminology at this rate. “Would have loved to be here to greet you. But we weren’t expecting…this.” Her gaze flicked to the door through which he had just entered.

“No one was,” Jedao said and wondered distantly if that fiercely cheerful voice was his own. “That’s why it worked. 

“If you’ll excuse me, Liozh Merel? I have some people I need to see.”

She did not stop him as he walked past.

* * *

Silence again, a heartbeat of it - nothing more and a calendrical vortex elongating it into the longest time anything could ever be all at once - as they stared at him and he at them. 

Ruo grinned. (Above it, his eyes glistened.) 

“About time! If you didn’t show up soon, Yeren and I had been discussing running away together. You know…again.” 

And then there were arms flung wide and wrapped close, with only Shuos reflexes between the three and an undignified heap on the floor as they rushed at each other all at once. Ruo clapped a hand to his shoulder, but what started as a jovial thump turned itself into a clutch that did not let go, as Yeren’s hair brushed both of their faces and her quiet words of relief tickled Jedao’s ear. 

“You know it wasn’t true” It was hard to say, for all that he knew they knew, that it was part of the plan. It was hard to let go of the lie after this long. And he was _so good_ at the lies that even he believed them, had to believe them, to make everyone else believe. His very bones rang with alarm at disavowal now. 

“I had to say it. And show it. But it wasn’t true.”

When Shuos Ruo and Shuos Yeren had disappeared, it was not with a bang. They had left that to future Jedao. But within the right circles, it was known. And how very well he had to convince everyone that they had betrayed him as deeply as they had the heptarchate in the doing, how viciously he had had to respond to conjure belief in the right people. 

“We know,” Yeren told him. Ruo tried to echo, but finally only nodded fiercely. Nothing more was said aloud for long moments. 

He had flipped the board: it was time to set it anew and finish what he had started. But…

Not just yet.


End file.
